Wfmc workflows - seeking the basics

[aufflick]

Hello fellow monks.

I have, over the years, had quite a lot of call for workflow engines. I assisted in the development of a finite state machine (FSM) workflow engine for OpenACS and have even given the odd guest lecture on workflow theory.

As such, I am comfortable with the concepts of business processes, FSMs, Petri Nets and all those wonderful workflow things.

What I do confess to be ignorant of are the industry heavyweight standards like the Wfmc XPDL XML format for defining workflows (as used, apparently, by SAP).

There are various open source implementations of Wfmc compliant workflow engines such as OpenWfmc (java), Enhydra Shark (java) and Workflow::Wfmc (Perl). There are also graphical editors/designers for constructing Wfmc compliant workflow designs which you can export to XPDL XML format (and which in turn drives your workflow engine) such as JaWE (java).

I'm really looking for a fast way to ramp up my knowledge of Wfmc and maybe implement a workflow using Workflow::Wfmc - can anyone here suggest any good introductory material (online or book) or offer any salient nuggets of goodness?

On the surface it seems quite complicated - I'm still waiting for the aha moment when it all clicks into place.

/Mark

[systems]

I think you might find this book interesting
Workflow-based Process Controlling
A PDF version is available for free download